If you want to add a little green to your home—whether it’s green for nature’s sake or green because you like the idea of growing food—you don’t need a lot of space to do it. Here are some suggestions to add a little plant life to your home or office, no matter what size it is.

10. Start Small

Advertisement

If you have a small space, it’s even more important that you start off small. One plant, maybe two, ideal for small spaces, in a space where you know they’ll get good light, won’t be a mess, and that you’ll be able to see and enjoy their presence (and remember to take care of them!)

9. Add Plants to Often Overlooked Places

Advertisement

One of the biggest ways to make an impact with a small amount of space and not a ton of greenery is to use spaces that you traditionally wouldn’t consider for your garden. Windowsills and fire escapes are common (if not always code) in the city, but consider your bathroom, which is actually a perfect habitat for some types of plants. If it doesn’t feel like you have room or space for them in there, these DIY suction caddies can give you a little room on the bathroom walls (or really, any walls,) and those bathroom-friendly plants can clean the air and soak up the humidity while you shower and bathe. Bonus: you won’t need to remember to water them as often as others.

8. Choose Plants Perfect for Whatever Light Level You Have

Advertisement

You don’t need to have glorious, south-facing windows that get light from sunup to sunset to have happy, healthy plants. Some plants definitely love the light, but others thrive in the shade or even in dimmer, indirect sun, so your first task—especially if you’re trying to save space and buy just the right plants—is to figure out what kind of light your space offers and buy the right kind of plants accordingly.

7. Build Multi-Tiered, Space-Saving Planters

Advertisement

Spall spaces demand small-space planting solutions, and a pot in a corner stuffed to the corners with plants isn’t a good one. Not only will the plants in the pot not be happy (and have no room to grow), you can do much better with a little effort.

6. Use Your Outdoor Spaces Wisely

Advertisement

If you have some outdoor space to use as part of your garden—even if it’s just a Juliet balcony in the city or a tiny windowsill, you can use it to your growing advantage. A little space and some elbow grease is all it takes for these Earthbox-style planting boxes, or for this square-foot garden, which can grow a lot in a small part of the yard, or even on a communal roof.

5. Try Unconventional Growing Spaces

Advertisement

Speaking of using the walls, don’t underestimate the utility of unconventional growing spaces like those walls. There are plenty of other growing projects that let you use spaces like your balcony walls, or even these creative “gutter gardens” that stick to the side of your house or building, and even look lovely.

4. Grow Something that’ll Flourish All Year Long

Advertisement

For the biggest bang for your growing buck, you don’t want to deal in plants that just flower in the spring and early summer, and then require a ton of re-work in the winter. Indoors or outdoors, you want plants that you can keep happy year round, or at least nuture in the spring and summer and go dormant in the fall and winter. Pick plants that’ll do well at any time of year, and then determine whether they’re as much or as little effort as you’d like to put into them.

3. Choose Plants that “Earn Their Space”

Advertisement

Plants that “earn their space” are plants that give you some tangible benefit that makes them well worth the area in your home they occupy. Even if you just love the leafy companionship, or love the sight of some green in your home, a plant that cleans the air nicely, or smells lovely, can replace air fresheners or purifiers (to some degree, anyway.)

2. Put Your Plants In Your Furniture, Not On It

If you are DIY-inclined and willing to get your hands dirty (and we don’t mean with soil, although that’ll come later), maybe build your plants into your furniture to save even more space and bring some greenery into your home. This IKEA hack gives a LACK table an inset planter, and while this picnic table project adds a sunken cooler to the center, you can easily do the same to add some plants—especially some herbs you can then use with your food.

Lifehacker’s Weekend Roundup gathers our best guides, explainers, and other posts on a certain subject so you can tackle big projects with ease. For more, check out our Weekend Roundup and Top 10 tags.